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Friday September 11, 1998

Hospital window design crosses religious line, employee argues

NOMA FAINGOLD
Bulletin Staff

One man's plus sign is another man's cross to bear.

Ben Medved, an employee at Valley Medical Center in San Jose, was walking by the hospital's near-completed building when a bank of windows caught his attention.

There, to his surprise, was an opaque window design that looked to him like a two-story cross.

Medved, the chief steward for the alcohol and drug department at the hospital, saw an identical facade on another side of the new main hospital building, which is scheduled to open on Oct. 24.

"When I first saw it, I was stunned," said the Mountain View resident. "I was aghast that at a county system -- which I'm proud to be an employee of -- there was a cross that has a Christian derivation.

"[That] doesn't belong in a secular government institution."

Medved, a member of Reform Congregation Etz Chayim in Palo Alto, registered the first and only complaint thus far, presenting his argument at a joint conference committee meeting on the health and hospital systems this past spring.

He said that committee members, including two San Jose supervisors, were sympathetic to his perception but didn't offer to make any architectural changes.

Still, Medved wasn't willing to let the issue rest, despite getting an official verbal response at the meeting from project director Patrick Love.

"They look like plus signs," Love recently told the Bulletin. "They're not intended to be symbolic of anything. As a public agency, we are sensitive to the fact that our public buildings can't portray any religious symbolism whatsoever."

According to the project's architect, Herb Moussa of the San Francisco firm Anshen+Allen, the opaque window blocks are a design element to conceal unappealing parts of the interior.

"The plus sign is to cover up where the floor and walls intersect," Moussa said. "There was no intention to have any particular pattern."

The frosted glass windows also conceal bathroom, stairways and mechanical spaces. They are visible on four sides of the building.

While Medved singled out the designs that he thought resembled crosses, he mistakenly assumed that two others were incomplete and would eventually be identical to the ones that offended him.

But Moussa said the other two are finished. One is shaped like an upside-down T, and the other like a plus sign with a wider bottom leg.

Last month, Medved contacted the San Jose-based Jewish Community Relations Council, urging it to examine the building.

JCRC Director Stephanie Shernicoff visited the site and took pictures. Although she saw the designs as being derivative of the Red Cross symbol, she consulted with the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, the New York-based umbrella group for JCRC branches.

"There was no precedent," she said. "They were satisfied that the sentiment was not religious."

As for her own impression of the glass, Shernicoff said, "It seemed decorative. I expected it would be more along the line of Christian crosses. I believe there was no religious intent."

Medved, however, still disagrees. "I'm surprised and disappointed that they made that determination," he said.

He's not sure yet what his next move might be. "I'm going to talk to my rabbi, and I'll consider what other avenues are available to me."

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